Yesterday's Echo by Matt Coyle Read Free Book Online Page A

cop cars. The woman was crying and wore blue latex gloves against her white smocks. A maid who’d seen something horrible.
    Melody?
    Had I been too late? Had the two thugs found her while I was arguing with Turk? An image of Melody lounging naked on my couch flashed in my mind. Then she morphed into Colleen laid out on the coroner’s table. My face burned hot and sweat beaded my hairline. Had I failed again? I had to find out what happened. And who it happened to.
    A crowd had gathered outside the tape, pushed back onto the sidewalk by a couple of uniforms. Wet-suited surfers, sweat-suited geriatrics, and a small group of German tourists craned their heads to get a better view. I slipped into the middle of them. There wasn’t much to see. The door was opened on a bungalow fronting the street and a woman in a white lab coat brushed black fingerprint powder on the doorknob.
    Members of the crowd murmured to each other, and I heard the word “dead” a couple times. The number of cop cars suggested as much. But nobody knew for sure. I heard another vehicle pull up and glanced over and saw a coroner’s van. My stomach knotted tighter. All doubt now erased, I was just left with the “who.”
    On the far left-hand side of the parking lot, a woman talked to a detective up against the crime-scene tape. She had her back to me, but something about her was familiar. Designer jeans, powder-blue sweater, natural brown curls. The detective was short, but made up for it with attitude and attire. Herringbone jacket, tan slacks, slicked-back hair, and an ’80’s porn mustache. He saidsomething and the reporter laughed and flicked her hair away from her eyes. I guessed it wasn’t the first time they’d been together at a murder scene.
    The woman turned, stuffed a notepad in her leather shoulder bag, and hurried across the parking lot.
    â€œHeather?” I said.
    She looked over at me and flashed a high-wattage smile under big brown eyes. Heather Ortiz,
San Diego U-T
food reporter. She’d done a story a few years back on family owned restaurants versus the big chains. Turk had talked on the record for the story. Afterward, Heather and I’d had a couple of drinks in the bar that had ended with breakfast in her bed. Seemed she’d moved up the food chain to the cop beat.
    â€œRick? I never took you for a Lookie-Loo.”
    â€œWhat happened in there?”
    â€œYou’re white as a sheet.” She put a hand to my forehead. “Are you okay?”
    â€œFine. What happened?”
    Heather examined me with reporter’s eyes looking for a scoop. She must have read my desperation, and realized I had more than the normal prurient interest in whatever had happened inside the bungalow. She looked over my shoulder at the crowd and then took me by the hand and led me over to a red Mazda Miata convertible parked on the street.
    â€œWhat’s going on, Rick? Do you know someone who was staying in that room?”
    â€œI know someone staying here, but I don’t know what room she’s in.”
    â€œYour friend is probably all right.” She rubbed my hand. “It’s a he, not a she, they’re about to zip up in a black bag.”
    I let out a sigh, louder and longer than I could control.
    â€œShe must be someone special.”
    â€œA friend.”
    I wasn’t sure yet whether or not Melody was special. I wasn’t sure of anything about her. Except that sometime between steppingout of the shadows last night and disappearing from my bed this morning, Melody’d become my responsibility. I hadn’t realized it until the two toughs tried to beat her whereabouts out of me. There was no reason to it, although I’m sure some shrink would tell me I was trying to make up for past sins. Responsibility didn’t need reason. It only needed commitment. Now I just had to find Melody.
    â€œWell, I trust her stay was more pleasant than the